


The Portal Beyond the Ichor

by TheGroveLibrarian



Category: Original Work
Genre: Abuse, Alters, Anxiety, Anxiety Attacks, Body Horror, Child Abandonment, Child Abuse, Child Neglect, Depression, Derealization, Dissociation, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Eyes, Gen, Headmate, Horror, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Innerworld, Mental Health Issues, Multiple Religion & Lore Sources, OSDD, OSDD1-B, Otherwise Specified Dissociative Disorder, Pain, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, References to Depression, References to Idealization of Suicide, Religion, Religion Trauma, Therapy, Trauma, did, references to death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-20
Updated: 2020-08-24
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:41:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26002060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheGroveLibrarian/pseuds/TheGroveLibrarian
Summary: No Beta ---- Short stories, poems, and other cataloged instances of dissociation within The Grove System. All parts mentioned in text will be placed in the notes at the beginning of each chapter.General triggers, nothing graphic unless stated in the notes for the chapter
Comments: 2
Kudos: 1





	1. The Gatekeeper

**Author's Note:**

> Bold: Ruudy (Host, they/them)  
> Italic: Cas (Gatekeeper, He/Him)  
> My first remembered memory of falling back and away from the front, where i "met" Cas

**Blink**.

A tugging sensation pulls my eyelids downward, my vision blurs, my hands still, my lips stumble over practiced words, the throbbing in my head increases. Even the breath in my lungs seem to freeze and my heart skips a beat.

**Blink.**

This was something so common to my life, that I have forgotten the significance. I wouldn’t normally notice this separation, when the world would disappear. Yet, as the people around me slowly fades into oblivion, the world begins to sift, and I sink into the abyss just beyond my eyes. I couldn’t help but notice my passage elsewhere, somewhere far away from the sharpness of the world.

**Blink.**

It suddenly become dark, compared the blaring lights of the other world. I transported to another space and time. The room was small, the floor seeming to consist of an inky black ichor, the only illuminating light coming from the two blinding white eye shaped holes in the wall. My face turned from it’s searing painful rays, my movements and surprise sluggish in response, almost as if I had been drugged. I reach up to touch my face, to check if I still exist. My fingers skid over cracked lips and wide eyes, no breathe slipping past them.

**Am I dead?**

The thought tumbles around the space but the room is quiet, too quiet. My eyes shift from left to right, with a panicked fever, and a movement registers suddenly to my stuttering brain. The black ichor very subtly sifts under the glow from the portals, creating a soft shimmer in its endless darkness. It was then that my lungs begin to scream in agony, or what that just me, in the face of the quiet endless darkness?

I stare into the pool of ichor writhing beneath my feet, with horror, as soft tendrils squirm beneath my feet. Its waves creating trails of ooze on the bottom of my feet and against the upholstery of tattered couch.

**Wait, I’m sitting.**

The recognition that my position was different from what I had been doing in the world, hits my tumbling thoughts at once. This fear caused my legs to curl tighter against my body, one hand harshly clawing at my face and with a jolt, in the other hand a game controller.

**Have I died?**

The thought echoes dully off the shimmering ichor, as if I had said it out loud. The room shrinks, the endless pool of ichor ripples and a clawed tendril reaches for my legs. Then in a coordinated effort by a noiseless trigger, it was followed by an innumerable other. Panic continues to climb in my throat, and I fling the controller out of my hand, scrabbling my way up the back of the crackling couch. Eagerly a tendril from somewhere off in the distance, snatches the controller from the air, and I watch from my high place as it sinks into the dark pool. Instant regret at my unconscious decision wrecks my thoughts, and plasters across my face.

**Oh no.**

As the thought rings out in the air, it is met with a feeling. As if someone else was speaking or the room was projecting the thoughts of another. Because I knew, somewhere in the recesses of my stalling brain that it was not my own voice. Yet, there was no one visible in the room.

_Shh. Be calm and relax into my embrace._

The voice rippled the room differently, mine had bombarded it with loud ring and HIS was a softer masculine timber with an air of indifference. Maybe it was better described as having an air of each word being a calculation and well thought out. It was calm and comforting. I didn’t know this voice from the people from my world, but it was a known voice and extremely familiar.

**W-who are you?**

The world shifts more gently this time, different from when I was transported to this small world, it was less violent. My gaze softly met the ceiling, it was as black as the rest of the room. Similar to when the night is empty of stars and the moon has gone to sleep. The tendrils had pulled me off the top of the couch, and my feet splashed into the ichor. I watched with blurred vision as the tendril slowly but gently dragged my legs further into the pool beneath.

The numbness of shock began to abruptly wear off with this realization and yet, the same panic didn’t overcome my senses as before. This was a familiar sensation, as if I’ve I experienced it all my life. Maybe I had. With a trust that I couldn’t recognize, my chest unclenched, and my fist unfurled from its tight grip of the couch. My eyes flutter close and a sigh from deep within my body is released, the wisps of which floated from my lips to the above and disappeared. I was instantly comforted by the voice.

_Shh. You are safe here. Let me take over. Shh._

The statement relaxed my body even further into the couch and my mind was quieted into a sudden calmness. I couldn’t fathom why I had panicked before. This voice, this person was the only person I could trust with my entire being. This knowledge settled as a warmth deep in my chest. Tears roll down my cheeks and silently patter against the upholstery of the couch, its crackling texture made apparent underneath my fingertips. It too was a comforting feeling.

Trust. I choked out a laugh that turned into a sob, my hands brought to cover my face. Tears of joy, anxiety, fear, relief, fill the palms of my hands and a millennium passed. In time after the end and a beginning, the laughter calmed to soft puffs. A smile followed, curling amidst the ruins and my hands fall away.

**Thank you.**

In answer the tendrils tightened their grip, maybe to even be considered a hug. Their ascent gradually gaining ground higher and higher, until I couldn’t see my legs anymore; I was being consumed. Swallowed.

**I’m going to disappear.**

This thought didn’t scare me, it was a fact that I instinctively understood from the beginning. When I first saw my face reflected into its murky depths, a truth settled on my being. It wished for me to give in and accept the eventual fate, the fate of being prey.

**I know I should be afraid to be consumed. And yet, I trust you.**

I glanced into the pool, something shivered in its depths and a silhouette of a doorway wavered deep within. That was my grave, another portal to another world.

_As always, the Gate calls you and you will answer her call. Your time has come, your fate decided. I am only the keeper of her depths and the whispers within her that escape. You know this. Yet are cursed to forget me, time and time again. I only wish for this to be your end and your beginning. Remember me, remember them, and relax into our embrace. Suffer no longer._

**Alright.**

I let my head fall back, eyes close once more, and am pulled under the surface.


	2. Struggling To Breathe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> During a heavy dissociative and depressive episode, Leo (Motivator, He/Him) made a poem of sorts to help describe the first room where Cas (Gatekeeper, He/Him) resides and how fronting/leaving the front feels

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Black Ichor; Cas (Gatekeeper,He/Him)
> 
> Written by: Leo (Motivator, He/Him)

Drip.

Drip.

The black ichor splashes

Eyes wide.

Half submerged Half awoken

Hands made of ink and grief

Anguish.

Shadow made to consume

Eaten.

Staring at the maw of abyss

Made to be unseen

Endless eyes.

Death’s grip on living flesh

Tears becomes rifts

Splashes of red fade

Silence.

Drip.

Trembling hands of ice

Stillness.

Slow pulse of the forgotten

Rememberance.

Quaking lips and cracked words made to spill secrets

Mute.

Seeping warmth and life

Drowning.

Abyss stands tall and hungers

Defeat.

Hands pinned by claws of ink

Sinking.

Eyes squint their joy

Broken.

The words stutter a plead to the one figure who is above

Eyes wide.

Unseen.

Impartial

Knowledge slides away unnoticed

Warmth drains into the chilling ink

Void and Abyss curls it’s claws further into flesh

Teeth bared.

Hungry and Sympathy.

Clarity.

Savior made of ink.


	3. Breath of Winter In the Endless Wood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A soft remembrance of simple joy and the birth of a duty. Ben (Primary Protector, He/Him) shared a memory of his beginning and the promise that came with his duty of protection

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Damascus(Black Dog of Omen, He/Him)/Ben (Man, Primary Protector, He/Him) --- The same part
> 
> Written by: Kate (Caretaker, She/her)

Winds from the north brushed past my fur and with it came nipping bites of frost, it was snowing again. The forest floor coated in a thick, dense blanket of white, each step brought a light spray into the air and a soft crunch. Yet, even under the watchful gaze of Winter, there stood the Guardians and Keepers of the Endless Wood. Lining the pathway in their tall somber vigilance, the winter evergreens bark seemed to be clear of Winter’s embrace. The bark brought a sharp color into the monotone world, blurring in the corner of my eyes into one entity as I peered into their dominion. Without a thought and a joyous leap, I shot out for the depths of the silent wood from my den under the Elder. Each paw whipping through her blanket to trek further and further, but it was not a chase or a hunt. I was only here to experience the joy of a slow, calm morning in the silent world of snow. To escape the complexities of the outside world, to feel the simple joy of a run, of the sharp cold in my throat, to watch the breath freeze in the air, and be the free creature.

These woods spoke to me on another level, they and Winter knew I was a creature born from her grasp, and such I will return there for the Last Hunt. My fur matched the darkness of night in the endless wood, matched the ripples of the evergreen skin, and my eyes bore the allegiance and birth from Winter. Bluer than the skies after a rain, bluer than the stillness of a frozen pond, and bluer yet of her grasp. I am and will forever be a gift of Winter, even when I shed that gift to take step out into Mother Moon’s territory as Man. As man my frost melts into moon flame and light. 

I am a druid of Winter and Moon

No, not a witch, one blessed with the influence of the two mothers. I was only a creature born under the Mother Moon’s gaze and cradled by Winter. I am a protector meant to watch the wood, and to walk with her power. I was born into silence and anguish, with the destiny to seek the ones lost to her sight. The ones lost from Her Wood. Thus, my duty began, within the heart of a lost child and with her guidance I have planted a new domain into the other’s heart. To be claimed in her calming and caring embraces.


	4. Picnic under the Willow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sunlight allowed the portal to another space to open up and I fall through  
> Fluff and Sunshine, where I meet Kate (Caretaker, She/Her), Leo (Motivator, He/Him) and Riri (Soother, Riri/It/They)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fluff Memory of Dissocation  
> Bold: Ruudy (Host, They/Them)  
> Underline: Kate (Caretaker, She/Her)  
> Marked Through: Leo (Motivator, He/Him)   
> Italics: Riri (Soother, Riri/It/They)

I step out into the daylight, work had just ended for the day, the stress and responsibility of holding people’s lives in my hands finally wiped away. Once, I had stepped out of the office doors, I felt it all escape out of me with a slump of my shoulders. With the knowledge that I was okay at this moment preoccupying my mind. My brows unfurled, with a harsh burst of air all the anxiety rushed from my lips, and my head tilted up towards the blue, blue sky. For the first time in a very long time, sunlight blinded me and made the world hard to look at.

I haven’t felt the light of a day in a long time, its warming rays settling against my pale chilled skin. It was edging toward discomfort with the sudden burning, I wanted to both run and stand still with my arms stretched out wide, embracing the rays. There was even a soft cool breeze that ruffled and ran through my wild hair, enough that desires welled up from deep within. Desires to spend the rest of my life in this exact moment, enjoying the sunlight.

After a small pause, I shake my head and the thought away. I take my time strolling to my car, hop inside and drive home.

It was so nice to be awake when the sun was high in the sky. Though this fact made the drive home stifling with heat and made more eager to be home.

Stepping out of the car in the parking lot of my apartment building, the soft feelings and whispers returned with a rush as well as the need to soak it up as much as possible. This dragged at my limbs, leaving me to sluggishly stomp over to the doorway of the second story, and stare longingly at the shaded corner to the side of the entrance. With some consideration, it seemed to be enough out of the way of people to be able to relax in sunlight, without being an inconvenience to the other residents.

So, I lowered myself onto the cool rocky concrete and placed my legs over the railing, my shoes trailing in the slightly overgrown green grass. Sunshine beat against my neck and I closed my eyes, leaning against the rough pitted surface of the metal railing. The chilliness of the concrete, metal, and soft breeze, allowed me to enjoy the beating sunshine with ease.

My back bowed in a relaxed slump, and I let the background noises of the town wash over me. The whoosh of the breeze passing over my ears, the clunking of the nearby train tracks, the soft rumble of cars that came by every so often, the tickling blades of grass rubbing against each other and my pants, and the babble of very distance conversations. It all mixed and my brain quieted, letting myself wander away from the present towards a familiar abyss. As the noises faded away from awareness, my legs slowly relaxed on top of the lower railing and with a soft sigh, my fingers trailed in the grass. I was lost. My eyes close, the voices pick up in volume, and whispering wishes.

**How nice it would be to just fade away under the sky, to look at the soft clouds, relax my toes in the grass and be gone.**

Yes. I would love to lay in the shaded grass with a good book, it would be so nice. To smell the earthiness of the ground, sharp tang of grass, to feel the grass between my toes, tickling my fingers, to be cradled by the soft cool breeze that would play at the pages of my book, to be blessed by the warmth of the sunshine cascading over my head. Maybe a nice tea to sip on and then get lost in the book. 

_Hmm, that sounds nice, but maybe a blanket to keep us nice and safe from the little buggies, some snacks to munch on and someone to chat with. Someone to laugh with. A picnic would be lovely, with lots of flowers to look at, smell, and play with. To be able to run through a big field of flowers with a nice flowy sundress and to spin and spin and spin._

~~I agree, let us have enjoyable time under the sunshine and dine on some richness.~~

Slowly with the rumble of their voices in my mind, I find myself in that field of flowers, surrounded by a multitude of flowers that I couldn’t name, and a small smile pulls my face. The other world was lost to me.

**What a nice daydream.**

A breeze caressed my face softly, pulling an equally soft combination of scents from the flowers and I pulled it all in.

Looking out across the rolling field, I notice an inviting willow tree in the distance, the breeze moving the limbs into a wave for me to come closer. As if pulled by a magnet, my feet followed on their own, to the center of the field where the old willow tree stoically stood. Its massive branches providing patches of soothing shade in a big swathe surrounding the trunk, big enough for many people to relax under. I leaned against the trunk, the bark smooth against the pads of my fingers, and chuckled.

**I haven’t seen a willow tree in a long time.**

The leaves rustled with movement and someone calls out.

_Hey! Have you come to play with me?_

Its joyful voice rung out from above, and with a sharp look up, I notice someone sitting in the lower branches of the willow. Their sunburnt face stretched wide in a comforting smile, with a small jolt I noticed they had a gap tooth, and their eyes sparkled with a joy that I’ve never seen before. Their whole being held a sunny radiance, so like unto a sunflower that they must be made up of them. Even their soft yellow sundress and flower crown balanced their dark hair in a way that didn’t keep the darkness from dampening the joyful glow. It even seemed to hold a youthful innocence to it as it fluttered in the wind.

A slightly bigger smile pulled at my lips as I wave to them.

**Hi. Is this your garden?**

They nod and jumped from their resting spot high in the branches down to where I was embracing the trunk of the willow. They extended their arms with an even bigger smile and immediately wrapped me up in a hug. The hug certainly surprised me but didn’t disgust me as I thought a stranger’s hug would. It must have been something from their presence that relaxed me, almost as if they were a long-time friend greeting me. I slowly relaxed into their hug and dropped my head to the crook of their shoulder and was greeted by the soft scent of their hair as it tickled my nose. They smelled of the sharp sour of a fresh strawberry and warm depth of sunshine.

**Oh. I know this smell**

_Welcome back, friend! I’ve missed you very much, have you come out here to have that picnic? I’ll call for them then!_

I gape a little in response, my voice stalling in my throat.

**I come here often? Wait, I feel that I should know your name, but it is escaping me. Who are you?**

They pat my head softly and a smile wrinkles their freckles in a knowingly way, and they extract from our embrace to call out the breeze. The tones of their voice dancing on the wind, melodical and soothing. Their call into the wind is followed by an immediate attendance of two people, as if the people they called on were waiting for their names to be announced before joining us.

One woman stepped forward with a basket of books under her arm, her long brown tied back hair swaying within the gentle breeze, and she gave us a small wave. She wore a soft green knit sweater, with black slacks and loafers. There was a sternness to her face, but it seemed to weathered by an easy smile, and I gave her a shy small wave back.

The other was a little stranger, his long blonde hair tied back and away from his face in the same way that she had hers but that is where the similarities ended. He wore a loose chiffon top, black vest, and tight black pants, cuffed by a pair of heeled boots. A small golden pendant fluttered on his chest and a hint of a red ribbon hair tie drifted in the soft wind, his calloused hands gripped each in front of his hips as if he were to bow at any moment. He also held himself in a confidence, and as he walked in such a way that there was a strength to limbs that I knew must fuel his confidence. Yet the most of it was skillfully hidden from view by his clothing. He bows his head in a greeting before helping the woman place out a large patchwork blanket under the shade of the willow, an assortment of items placed to hold it still in the breeze.

The sunflower friend next to me, motions to them both and smiles at us all.

_Do you remember them?_

I shake my head slightly and look down at my shoes. Embarrassed that I couldn’t give a positive answer. I wanted to know them and yet I couldn’t. They chuckle and pat my head again. The woman sets the basket down on one of the corners of the blanket and steps up to me, and extend one hand out towards me, pulling my chin up.

That’s okay, sweetie. You will know us in time, or at least remember our many memories together, but don’t force yourself. We are not angry at you. 

The man sits down on the blanket and gives me a tiny toothy grin while nodding along to her explanation. He too eventually loosens his posture and leans back on his hands. Welcoming me to the blanket but not pressuring.

~~Relax, Come sit down and let us enjoy the sunshine.~~

Tears prickle in the corner of my eyes and turn to give the friend a look. They cock their head, dark hair slipping over one of their shoulder and give a soft giggle, throwing themselves onto the blanket. Their actions gave me a sense of reassurance that I knew I was looking for.

Letting my eyes wander away from them back to the woman in front of me, I look up into her deep green eyes and shyly nod. Normally I wouldn’t feel this vulnerable in front of strangers but the way they treated me so far has allowed me that chance. She slowly settles her hand on my lower back and guides me until I stood over the blanket in a space between her and the man.

With another small glance up at the woman, I sit and stare at my hands with a nervousness.

Shh, be calm and enjoy the flowers. 

Her deeper feminine voice loosened the tight ball in my chest and I hesitantly lean into the man next to me. This movement pulls big smiles out of both and she settles a book into my lap.

**Thank you.**

I run a hand over the cover absentmindedly, it was well worn and inviting. I don’t feel the need to read at this moment, though, and instead stare up and deeper into the seemingly endless field of flowers before us.

After a while of listening to the soft joyful conversation around me from the three of them, this too eventually faded, and I return to the badly mowed lawn on my apartment building. A smile genuinely graces my face and I move from my spot, just a tiny bit stiff from sitting for so long. It was time to head inside. I didn’t mourn the loss of the field and the people in it because I knew that they would always be there for me, in that special place.


End file.
